Can newborn hearing screening miss hearing loss that is present at birth?
It is possible for some children to have a mild or minimal hearing loss at birth and pass universal hearing screening. This is due, at least in part, to the underlying assumptions about newborn hearing screening. Any type of universal screening program needs to achieve a low false- alarm rate and a high hit rate. The goal for UNHS is that few children are referred for additional, more expensive testing who do not need it and those who are referred have a high likelihood of having hearing loss. To meet these requirements, current UNHS methods may not identify children with mild hearing losses. If no further audiological monitoring is being completed within the childs medical home, the result could be late identification of milder degrees of hearing loss.
